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283: Being good at being lost: Amity Gaige’s Heartwood
Dear friends My coaching work often integrates fiction. I do so because it allows us to see depth and nuance that non-fiction can’t. The non-fiction author can’t explore imagination or internal…
282: The Springboks and Strategy: Eben Etzebeth’s Unlocked
Good morning friends At the end of 2025, Eben Etzebeth released his biography, Unlocked. Etzebeth is South African rugby’s most capped player. In fact, he is one of the most…
281: Who is really in charge?
Dear friends I am revisiting Laozi’s Book of Dao, through a recent translation by one of my favourite authors, Ken Liu (a Christmas gift from my parents who have graciously…
280: Are you poisoned by power?
Dear friends Our last two letters, Self-Doubt and Success, and Excellence and Leadership, went longer than usual, so this week’s letter is briefer. /strategy Last week’s letter gave us four…
279: Nadia Davids, Jim Collins and Brian Lara: Excellence and Leadership
Dear friends Last week’s letter, Self-Doubt and Success: What J.M. Coetzee Teaches Us About Becoming, was a step outside our normal flow. I was, perhaps unsurprisingly, filled with doubt as…
278: Self-Doubt and Success: What J.M. Coetzee Teaches Us About Becoming
“A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us”Summertime, J.M. Coetzee Dear Friends Success always seems so neat, coherent and, in its perfection, unobtainable. We…
277: Life Happens. Make Plans.
Life is what happens to youWhile you’re busy making other plansJohn Lennon, Beautiful Boy Dear Friends You are young and life is longAnd there is time to kill todayAnd then…
276: How Rituals Build Capacity in Leadership and Life
Dear Friends In this Tim Ferriss interview about his new book – The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness – Harvard professor Arthur Brooks offers…
275: Magic Bullets. Founder’s Mindset. Fela Kuti.
Dear friends, Today is the year’s last letter. We will gather here again on 18 January 2026. It is ‘best books of 2025’ season. My favourite lists are the Financial…
274: John Kay. Billie Jean King. John Milton.
Good morning, dear friends Summer has eventually arrived on Africa’s southern tip (although can Cape Town’s wind take a breath? Pretty please). One of my favourite distilleries, Pienaar and Son,…
273: Lego Friends. Sarah Jessica Parker. Richard Powers.
Good morning dear friends In today’s letter: If you enjoy this week’s letter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can subscribe [here]. /strategyIn his truly excellent A New…
272: Zohran Mamdani. Tanitoluwa Adewumi. JM Coetzee.
Good morning dear friends If you liked last week’s quotation from Joanne Joseph’s Children of Sugarcane you might enjoy this one from Wole Soyinka. Today’s letter draws lessons from Zohran Mamdani’s victory,…